Disturbing trailer for doc on Soviet dog-reanimation experiments

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Charlie made a disturbing video backed by Kurtz's "Everything Burns Alike," featuring footage from Experiments in the Revival of Organisms, a 1940 documentary on the horrific experiments of Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, Voronezh, U.S.S.R. Charlie explains: "In Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko's lab, he drained all the blood from dogs until they were dead for a full 10 minutes. He then pumped blood back in to revive the dogs back to their normal selves. The full documentary is horrifying, but fascinating. In the experiment, they also pumped blood through a decapitated dog head and it licked its mouth, reacted to sounds, etc."

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The best part of the original Experiments movie was the presence of J.B.S. Haldane (one of the founders of the field of population genetics and one of the best British biologists of all time) in the intro. Yes, this was in his card-carrying Marxist phase

I think there may have been some dispute as to whether Bryukhonenko really managed to reanimate that dog’s head or whether it was faked for the film. There’s no footage that shows the business end of the severed head with the tubes hooked up, so it would have been pretty easy to pull off a The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

There were similar and better-documented experiments in later decades, including Dr. Robert White’s 1970 “monkey head transplant” experiment at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. So it’s not impossible that Bryukhonenko really did at least some of the things he claimed but the evidence is far from conclusive. It’s even possible that he did reanimate a dog’s head but the footage in the film was a faked depiction of the real experiment.

And let us not forget that this work was being done when Stalin was at his nuttiest. I would guess that appearance of success was more important than accurate noting of the failure to succeed. Exercise for the reader: learn about the wonder that was Lysenkoism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Our first commenter on this post requested a unicorn chaser, which I regard as a healthy and normal response to this bit of vivisectionist porn. While I appreciate that female astronauts and 3D printed fuel valves are certainly nice things, I do not think that these posts constitute what a reasonable person would regard as a unicorn chaser.

You may argue that we readers have no reason to expect or demand unicorn chasers, and it’s true that you may organize your blog as you see fit. But merciful Zeus, sir! If we cannot abide by the most basic of civil niceties and the social contract that compels a unicorn chaser, then we are no better than the cats!

I feel the need to point out that the “disturbing” “horrifying” video of the experiments in the revival of organisms was created in 1940 — predating CPR by about 20 years. While I lack the data to say whether CPR is a direct result of this research, I’m not sure what other experiment could prove that people aren’t automatically dead (beyond revival) just because their heart stops beating. I don’t think that such a miracle of medical science deserves the harsh labeling it’s receiving here.